By Bob Herbert, The New York Times. Posted October 12, 2008.

The lesson for Americans suffused with anxiety and dread over the crackup of the financial markets is that the way you vote matters, that there are real-world consequences when you go into a voting booth and cast that ballot.

For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they'd most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you've been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you'd like it to be.

Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression.

Mr. Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore.

It's not just the economy. While the United States has been fighting a useless and irresponsible war in Iraq, Afghanistan -- the home base of the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 -- has been allowed to fall into a state of chaos. Osama bin Laden is still at large. New Orleans is still on its knees. And so on.

Voting has consequences.

I don't for a moment think that the Democratic Party has been free of egregious problems. But there are two things I find remarkable about the G.O.P., and especially its more conservative wing, which is now about all there is.

The first is how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years. The second is how the G.O.P. has nevertheless been able to persuade so many voters of modest means that its wrongheaded, favor-the-rich, country-be-damned approach was not only good for working Americans, but was the patriotic way to go.

Remember voodoo economics? That was the derisive term George H.W. Bush used for Ronald Reagan's fantasy that he could simultaneously increase defense spending, cut taxes and balance the budget. After Reagan became president (with Mr. Bush as his vice president) the budget deficit -- surprise, surprise -- soared.

In a moment of unusual candor, Reagan's own chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein, gave three reasons for the growth of the deficit: the president's tax cuts, the increased defense spending and the interest on the expanding national debt.

These were the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives who were behaving so profligately. The budget was balanced and a surplus realized under Bill Clinton, but soon the "fiscal conservatives" were back in the driver's seat. "Deficits don't matter," said Dick Cheney, and the wildest, most reckless of economic rides was on.

Americans, including the Joe Sixpacks, soccer moms and hockey moms, were repeatedly told that the benefits lavished on the highfliers would trickle down to them. Someday.

Just as they were wrong about trickle down, conservative Republican politicians and their closest buddies in the commentariat have been wrong on one important national issue after another, from Social Security (conservatives opposed it from the start and have been trying to undermine it ever since) to Medicare (Ronald Reagan saw it as the first wave of socialism) to the environment, energy policy and global warming.

When the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the discoverers of the link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion, Tom DeLay, a Republican who would go on to wield enormous power as majority leader in the House, mocked the award as the "Nobel Appeasement Prize."

Mr. Reagan, the ultimate political hero of so many Republicans, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In response to the historic Brown v. Board of Education school-desegregation ruling, William F. Buckley, the ultimate intellectual hero of so many Republicans, asserted that whites, being superior, were well within their rights to discriminate against blacks.

"The White community is so entitled," he wrote, "because, for the time being, it is the advanced race…" He would later repudiate that sentiment, but only after it was clear that his racist view was harmful to himself.

The G.O.P. has done a great job masking the terrible consequences of much that it has stood for over the decades. Now the mask has slipped. As we survey the wreckage of the American economy and the real-life suffering associated with the financial crackup of 2008, it would be well for voters to draw upon the lessons of history and think more seriously about the consequences of the ballots they may cast in the future.

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The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. United State Constitution, Art. I Sec. 9 Par. 2

"Dissent is the Highest form of Patriotism" -- Howard Zinn

Damn, is that article ever slanted. What blew up were all of the unintended consequences of trying to provide home ownership to those who, without socialistic "help" from Democrat (Carter & Clinton) administrations, wouldn't qualify for a lean-to, let alone a real house. Not that Republicans were not at fault too ... but it certainly wasn't paleo-conservatives who pushed for this crap.

The term "bailout" doesn't exist in the dictionary of free market capitalism.

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Vi there was just as many Republicans who voted for the Bill as Democrats, and to make it acceptable for the republicans to pass it through Congress they had to let the Republicans put their pork in it...... If your going to attack the artical at least have your facts correct. NASCAR track Owners? Not Democrats my friend.
It was Both Parties that pushed for it, Both Republicans and Democrats.
Your Just putting out spin now vi.

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The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. United State Constitution, Art. I Sec. 9 Par. 2

"Dissent is the Highest form of Patriotism" -- Howard Zinn

haha yea your vote really matters...

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PARTY CUP GROW

Well, I refuse to vote for a system I don't believe in, but if I ever do- I will vote for whoever has the best hair.

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speaks louder than words.
Problems on the forum? Contact me here!

Nope Dank, no spin. I agree that Republicans as well as Democrats voted for the bailout. That's undeniable. What I DON'T agree with is that the collapse of Freddie and Fanny was the fault of free market conservatives. The fault lies at the feet of greedy cheaters in the private sector and power hungry Democrat congressmen and senators. The ones that should be going to jail are Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Joe Biden Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barak Hussein O'Bama.

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Most of the defaulted mortgages weren't poor people who had no business buying a house. That's a myth. Most of them were speculators who bought homes then walked away when the value of those homes dropped below what they had signed on to pay. So, if you want to blame a group, blame the real estate speculators. (Although, to be sure, there were some poor folks who shouldn't have been given a loan...but they weren't the majority.) *Everyone* was trying to ride that housing bubble upwards.

The real problem though was neither of these groups. The problem was the unregulated securities and CDS markets. When a bank has no real stake in whether a loan is repaid or not, they don't have any incentive to make sure the applicants have the ability to repay the loan. They just handed out loans willy nilly to anyone, packaged them into complex securities, then foisted them off on others. THAT was the problem -- that the banks had no real stake at all in the quality of their customers.

ok they're dirty , now where is the out rage for ur side a lobbiest for freddy fanny worked for the camp of ur man , not only that for 2yrs he got paid to not work , whats up with that outrage or not to rage .

Dank, despite your firm belief in the Great Socialist Principles of the Democrats, I think you need to examine your assumptions.

Yes, speculators can be blamed, as can idiots like Obama, Dogg, I mean Dodd, Barney Frank, Franklin Raines, and Jim Johnson.

The retarded desire to supply "affordable" housing is what is at the root of this crisis. Whether you care to admit it or not (denying it just makes you look out of touch with reality.)

When people who had no right purchasing a home were purchasing homes, and then selling those homes to speculate on another home then you have problems that lead to a bubble.

So, yes, it was speculators, but those speculators were often the people who had gotten in at the start of the bubble with junk loans in the first place.

So, they would have never been able to afford a mortgage.

"Affordable" housing, yeah, so "Affordable" that now only people making more than $75K/year can really afford the damn things.

Dank, admitting you're wrong doesn't make you look like a fool, it makes you look like some one who isn't a brain washed ninny who is incapable of independent thought (unlike Bush, Raines, Obama, and McCain.)

As far as blame, there's plenty to go around, but it was also the Democrats the consistently stepped in to interfere with further regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Two institutions that were central to the stability of the housing market and thus should have been more tightly regulated.

Banking Regulation should have remained tighter, and that might be the fault of the Republicans, but when idiots like Obama are running around suing banks for not providing enough "Sub Prime" mortgages the blame also goes squarely on them.

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Libertas inaestimabilis res est - Liberty is a thing beyond all price. | Sic Semper Tyrannis

I've heard that before and have some questions since I don't work in the mortgage industry. What I dont understand is how can speculators walkaway from a mortgage payment if they still have money in the bank? Do banks not pursue default home owners who have money? or are you saying the speculaters are now broke also? Why are they broke? Can they not rent those houses out anymore?

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Are you stupid or apathetic? I dont know and I dont care